Hello! I’m Jennifer Glagov, longtime program annotator for Music of the Baroque and current holder of the recently-created title “Special Projects Manager.” Although I worked for MOB from 1999 to 2002 as both the Box Office Manager and Director of Marketing, I took some time off (except for the program notes) to spend time with my son. Now that he’s six, he’s in school all day—and while I miss our lazy mornings in the park, returning to work at MOB has been a different kind of fun.
I’ve played violin since I was nine, but my background in music is predominantly academic. I hold the illustrious degree of “all but dissertation” from the University of Chicago, and actually enjoy reading the kind of dense prose you find in musicology journals, but I also love great concerts that can’t be described with words.
While researching the program for MOB’s May concert, I revisited Susan McClary’s essay, “The blasphemy of talking politics during Bach Year,” in which she tries to “demystify” music—particularly instrumental music—by talking about it in relation to existing social and political structures. For McClary, the fantastic harpsichord solo in the first movement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 is a moment of liberation, through which Bach expresses a simultaneous desire for, and resistance to, social harmony.
What do you think? Is it interesting to “talk politics” when it comes to music, or is music something that should remain in a realm separate from the lives of its creators?
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Guest (not verified) | Mon, 05/19/2008 - 4:10pm
I think it is exteremly interesting and thought provoking to get historical/polital context of the piece being performed. It gives additional meaning or further valuable understanding to how the composer was thinking and what their world was like at the time.
But for some reason, I despise hearing what current musicians/ artists/composers think about current politics. I think it completely detracts from the music.
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»Guest (not verified) | Mon, 05/19/2008 - 4:34pm
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»Guest (not verified) | Tue, 05/20/2008 - 11:23am
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»Guest (not verified) | Wed, 05/21/2008 - 10:59am
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»Guest (not verified) | Tue, 05/20/2008 - 4:18pm
This begs the question: can music stand on its own, have interpretive meaning and create strong feelings if it was composed by a political viewpoint or event?
Sure it can - look at Shostakovich's music or Mahlers - perhaps we are too involved or heated about current beliefs and events to understand how music can be separated from the news etc.
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»Jim Ginsburg | Wed, 05/21/2008 - 1:55am
By definition, great music has to be music that stands on its own, capable of being appreciated by and even inspiring those who know nothing "about" it.
But Shostakovich is the perfect example of a composer whose music can be enjoyed more and more on repeated hearings by those familiar with the circumstances under which he wrote and all the "codes" and sly references his music contains. Shostakovich (at least after his opera was viciously attacked in Pravda, putting him on notice) had to be able to write music that could get past the censors and still speak directly to people.
He managed to do this while writing some of the most beautiful and some of the most gut-wrenching music of the 20th century -- and music that has been extremely influential: I am continually amazed by how many American composers there are whose music often "sounds like Shostakovich" -- including, if not especially, contemporary composers.
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